With all the hype surrounding the Nintendo Switch lately, it’s been easy to forget that Microsoft is launching a new Xbox console later this year. Announced at last year’s E3, “Project Scorpio” is being trumped as the most powerful console ever built. With the many blunders Microsoft committed prior to and following the Xbox One’s launch in 2013, the company is betting big on Scorpio to give the Xbox brand a boost after years of trailing Sony’s PS4 in sales and mind share.
With the Scorpio still approximately six months away from release, there are still a lot of unknowns surrounding Microsoft’s next system. That being said, a fair amount of information has come out about the Scorpio’s specs and features, especially in the last few weeks. We’ll continue to update this list as more information is revealed, but until then, here’s everything we currently know about the next Xbox.
The Specs
Updated April 6, 2017: Microsoft has revealed official Scorpio specs to Digital Foundry:
- CPU: Eight custom x86 cores
- GPU: 6 teraflops
- RAM: 12GB GDDR5
- Memory bandwidth: 326GB/s
- Vapour-chamber cooling
- 1TB Hard Drive
If you’re curious about the nitty-gritty details, I recommend reading through Digital Foundry’s article, which goes in-depth with what all these specs translate to in practical terms. But if you’re like me and aren’t really concerned with terms like ‘Hovis method’ and ‘PIX captures,’ all you really need to know is that Microsoft is hoping to have most, if not all games running in 4K at 60 frames per second on Scorpio and these specs seem to back that target up.
Digital Foundry reports being shown a Forza tech demo running in 4K, 60 frames per second.